Friday, July 31, 2009

Pecan Pressure

On Thanksgiving almost ten years ago when my sister was a newlywed, she volunteered to bring the Pecan Pie to her in-laws holiday dinner. With a propensity for running behind schedule and still figuring out how to juggle two families for the holiday; she prepared the pies from scratch but ran out of time to bake them before she had leave for my family's house for lunch. She decided that she would bake the pies in my mom's oven as we all enjoyed lunch. They would be ready in time before she had to make her way to her second destination and none of her in laws would know about her scheduling snafu. As we sat down to eat she put the pies in the oven, set the timer and then headed into her first tryptophan overdose of the day. Exactly 45 minutes later the timer went off just in time to allow for the 15 minute cooling period and then off to the in laws. As she opened the oven door she realized she had made a terrible mistake. She had put the pies in and set the timer, but had neglected to turn the oven on. Her pies had sat in the oven for 45 minutes unaltered. We were all too engrossed in the happenings of the Thanksgiving feast to notice that there were no baking smells escaping from the kitchen.With no other options left, she had to arrive at her first in-law holiday dinner with a pre-made supermarket pie.

These taste amazing! I made them for thanksgiving dessert, BUT instead of baking powder I would recommend substituting baking SODA because they didn't rise properly, they just melted. Also consider refrigerating the dough before scooping it and making the indent. Flavor is great, just a few mechanical problems.